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Feeding our Future: Incriminating testimony
Some of the most incriminating testimonies to date occurred on Tuesday in the trial over the Feeding our Future pandemic fraud scandal. FOX 9’s Rob Olson has the details.
MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - Hanna Marekegn testified that suspected Feeding Our Future fraud ringleader Aimee Bock had given her and others the "American dream life" and that they were "able to own houses, good cars, and we were living very large."
She also testified that it was all fraud. And that Aimee Bock knew it. "All of us, the vendors, the founder, we were all doing wrong."
Believed COVID fraud was okay
The backstory:
Marekegn enrolled her Brava Cafe as a meal site under Feeding Our Future and soon claimed to feed thousands of meals a day for kids.
After restaurants were no longer allowed to be meal sites, she later became a vendor, providing meals to other non-profits that then served as meal sites.
She said her invoices for hundreds of thousands of dollars were fake.
And she said she convinced herself it was all okay, based on what she was told.
"Sometimes COVID fraud is not fraud," she testified. When asked where she heard that, she said: "From Feeding Our Future office."
The kickbacks
Timeline:
Marekegn testified she’d routinely given 5% kickbacks on the federal funds she received to another Feeding Our Future employee, a man who is also charged in the scheme but who fled the country prior to FBI raids.
But, at one point, she stopped paying him.
Then, in August 2021, she testified that Aimee Bock asked to meet her at a coffee shop, away from the Feeding Our Future offices. She was also told to leave her phone and watch in her car. Marekegn was due to get a $3 million dollar reimbursement for food she claimed to provide and Aimee wanted half of it in cash, she said.
"She asked me to pay her a kickback and I refused to pay her."
Bock then terminated Marekegn from Feeding Our Future sponsorship.
Bock was celebrated
What else to know:
But before their falling out, Marekegn said Aimee was like a god to the east African community.
She was at a party thrown for Bock after Aimee won a court case against the Minnesota Department of Education, which had halted payments but was ordered to resume.
Marekegn testified they were happy because "we can make more fraud."
"Did Aimee Bock know why you were celebrating her?" prosecutors asked. Marekegn responded: "Yes, sir."
"She knew about the fraud?" "Yes, sir."
Questioning her credibility
The other side:
Bock’s defense attorney maintains that Bock didn’t know about the fraud and was victim to "clever liars."
He tried to poke holes in Marekegn’s credibility as a witness, noting that she continued the fraud with a different program after Bock terminated her.
He questioned her motivations about testifying against Bock and her beliefs that she was pursuing the American dream by defrauding the government.